Todd Boehly relinquishes interim sporting director title as new Chelsea recruitment team get to work

As promised at the start of the season, Chelsea co-owner and chairman Todd Boehly has relinquished his interim sporting director title, having hired no fewer than five new people to actually head up the club’s new-look player recruitment team.

As detailed by Matt Law in the Telegraph, Boehly’s short-term self-appointment has now run its useful course, with transfers now headed up by Christopher Vivell (Technical Director) and Paul Winstanley (Director of Global Talent and Transfers). Vivell joined from RB Leipzig a few weeks ago, while Winstanley came over from Brighton not long after Graham Potter & Co.

Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images

It sounds like Boehly’s role will be minimal in this new structure (other than any related responsibilities that might fall to him as Chairman, should he keep that title for a while longer yet), with Joe Shields (Co-director of Recruitment and Talent), Laurence Stewart (Technical Director with Global Focus), and Kyle Macaulay (Recruitment Analyst / Boy Genius / Potter Proxy) making up the quintet. While not mentioned in the report, recently promoted Academy supremo, Neil Bath will supposedly also have some say going forward.

As Boehly promised at the start, he’s now put proper people on proper places as far as this part of the operation is concerned at the club. (Next up: medical team?) And that’s fantastic, though a bit (a lot) ironic given that one of the reasons his relationship soured with Thomas Tuchel was because he had asked the head coach to be more involved in transfers to “really collaborate”, which Tuchel didn’t like. He preferred to work in the old model (i.e. focus on coaching and let others focus on transfers), which is now once again the new model.

C’est la vie.